Letters to the Editor Tuesday

As a fortunate Tybee Island property owner, I would like to respond to several recent letters concerning Orange Crush.

In my college days, my friends and I went to the beach to try and meet girls and drink beer.

Jeannie Hutton, in a letter April 20 (“Tybee’s ‘old fogies’ should stop whining”), apparently enjoyed herself in her youth in Ocean City. But an important distinction is that we did not break the law.

We did not have sex on the beach, smoke pot out in public or leave behind our trash. Those are things that happened this year on and around the Tybee Pier.

To compare the relatively innocent fun in our pasts to what this group does is not remotely accurate.

After last year’s festival, I called the Tybee police chief to voice my concerns. His comment was that the majority of that crowd “were not college students.”

Whether they are or not is not important. I applaud the police response to this year’s issue and encourage them to continue to enforce the same laws that residents and visitors gladly adhere to thought the year.

B. A. OXNARD, III

Tybee Island

‘Gun-grabbers’ the ones who drank the Kool-Aid

In response to Barbara Dean and her April 19 letter to the editor about background checks for gun buyers (“Georgia’s senators drank NRA’s Kool-Aid”), she is entitled to her opinion.

But in my opinion, if it is forgivable to vote “no” on the background check bill in the U. S. Senate, then it is forgivable for you to have drunk the Kool-Aid that the liberal federal administration (gun-grabbers) have poured out and claimed to be the full truth and the common sense thing to do.

There isn’t any loop hole in the present background check system for gun shows. You cannot just go to a gun show and purchase a fully automatic gun or any other type of gun from one of the vendors without a background check, which has to go through the federal background data base.

Also, if a gun is purchased even from someone in another state, in order for it to be shipped across state lines it has to be shipped to a federally licensed dealer, where there is a requirement for a background check before you can pick the gun up.

Law-abiding citizens don’t need to be affected by new anti-gun laws when the existing gun laws that prohibit felons from possessing a gun aren’t being enforced as they should.

JAMES DUNIGAN

Port Wentworth

Feds tougher on guns than illegal immigrants

Boston and Watertown are only the latest places. I wonder now if our stellar government will outlaw terrorists, like they are trying to do our weapons, and close the border.

Immigration acts in Washington allow too many visas with so many of our legal citizens out of work. But this shows that corporate America owns Congress.

The border will never close. Corporate America will use the illegal aliens to make a dollar until hell freezes. Congress will continue to be their do-nothing real selves.

Don’t forget Congress and the administration have passed bills in the past and they never came to their full intent, such as the wall being built. Washington has ignored, and will ignore, any law to further its corrupt ways.

They have beefed up Border Patrol and immigration many times, then put verbal handcuffs on them to a point where they can’t do their jobs, at least nowhere near their full potential if they were turned loose.

Amnesty should not be thought of, period, let alone when our economy is in the dumps.

Who says the illegal immigrants won’t continue to use our social systems and public-owned hospitals as they have been? Federal and state governments will ignore them for their votes.

WALTER JENNINGS, SR.

Springfield

Dispense justice with a 99-cent bullet

I’ll never be in charge. In my opinion, our nation’s pursuit of justice has once again fallen short.

While the FBI and greater Boston’s skill and determination were swift and laudable, the true justice in “finding” Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been lost.

I don’t think there’s any doubt in anyone’s mind that this punk and his older punk brother are guilty of the Boston bombings. Now the city of Boston and the nation will pay millions in medical costs and trials, which will take years to conclude.

To learn what? Oh, that they were guilty. Sadly, not much if anything will be learned about their quest, which could help make our country safer, or, dare I say it, wiser.

We’ll just know to have “tighter security” at further events and check everyone’s backpacks (or ban them at such events). Millions of dollars will be spent, when a simple 99-cent bullet would have brought the same, effective justice.

“Finding” Tsarnaev dead would have been justice. That would send a better message to those desiring to do us harm.

We do not need, nor want, to give other potential “Tsarnaevs” a cause — or worse, a martyr.

JIM LEITH

Savannah

Push two-parent homes, not more gun laws

Since the Newtown massacre in December 2012, there have been many theories as to what caused a disturbed young man to commit such a heinous crime.

The gun control advocates insist that we need to further restrict the purchase of firearms, to ban high capacity magazines and even to ban the purchase of firearms altogether.

Others insist that more resources need to be channeled into the treatment of mental illnesses. However, no one has touched on what I believe is the underlying problem — the decline of the traditional two-parent family and the lack of a faith base within this family.

Things are quite different today. Statistics tell us that approximately one half of marriages end in divorce. A large number of children — a large majority in the minority community — are born out of wedlock, and a large number of young boys have no positive male role model in their lives.

In the Savannah-Chatham County school district. as many as 40 percent of the students who enter the 9th grade do not graduate, so they have no marketable job skills which are a must in today’s technical world.

These factors result in poverty, frustration, and ultimately, an increased probability that these individuals will ultimately be involved in crime and violence.

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Tybee ( IMHO) is too small for the " spring gathering "also referred to as orange crush. There is not enough parking for the vehicles, and the roads become useless for hours. I would have hated for ANYONE to have needed an AMBULANCE during this event. How does this happen ( each year )? Somebody IS making money on this, they have to be....just not on Tybee. How is it that a radio station in ATLANTA was " chatting this party up "?

Follow the money....

Its a shame that junk like ms. Hutton's remarks are published on Sunday........... ( largest circulation ) yet the common sense rebuttal gets buried in TUESDAYS paper.

Again, no amount of income is worth promoting the lewd, rude, uncaring, illegal, and in-your-face behavior of the type of person orange crush attracts. I don't care what kind of group it is - the demographics are irellevant to the attitude that they can do whatever they want, year after year, and get away with it.
And just in case you think I am racist, I do want to add that I am just as offended when unruly or nasty white people - any people - leave nasty baby diapers and peanut hulls on the beach or act stupid because they drank too much beer. Nasty is nasty - it knows no demographic barriers.

What do we do? Honestly, this trashing of the beach is a flipped finger at the rest of us who care.
Perhaps next year, Tybee should record PSAs to run on radio stations from here to Atlanta and Jacksonville. Remind people that a beach is a fragile ecosystem and that laws will be enforced. Maybe some of them will stay home.

I think that it is right and necessary to add a hundred or so additional law enforcement officers next year - find the money. If Ft Lauderdale cleaned up their spring break problem, Tybee can, too.
As people get up, make them pick up their trash. If they are having sex, put them in jail. If they are smoking dope, put them in jail. If they have weapons, haul them in.

Bring in jail wagons to hold them in or haul them to Ch Co for a spell in detention until they can call their peeps to pay their bail or fines.

If they know that we aren't putting up with their attitudes any longer, they will take their party elsewhere or do the world a favor and simply not have it.

Send the message: if you want to enjoy the beach, treat it and those around you with respect or keep your nastiness at home.